Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Specialist Search Engines

Module 4 Topic 2

Using blinkx Advanced Search which was reached by clicking on browse blinkx on right hand side, I limited the search to one content provider The Boston Globe, for Videos only searching the topic lunar eclipse. This search returned 3 results a 30 second video from 21/8/2008, a 1 minute video from 4/3/2007 and the third video was for 2 minutes and 44 seconds also on 4/3/2007.Next I repeated the search in Youtube and the original search for lunar eclipse returned about 5070 results. I then went to Search options and limited the search to Videos only, anytime, from the category science & technology and of short duration (under 4 minutes). This time the results were about 1200. This certainly confirmed that Youtube has an immense database of videos.

Google book searchThis part of the exercise was not totally successful –I did get results for a Google Book Search for Time magazine with the subject Hillary Clinton but not all results were limited to articles in Time Magazine. I got a large number of results that had time, and Hillary Clinton in the article but were not from Time Magazine.Whereas when I clicked into an actual magazine issue from the display of titles I could zoom in and out, display single or double pages, select thumbnails or full screen, view the contents page and successfully read the magazine on line. I was looking at Billboard 29 November 2008 issue.It has the potential to be a very useful tool especially as more titles are included. Patrons will be able to investigate and determine whether particular books are relevant prior to requesting or suggesting to purchase.